Blogging for Large Classes

Many (scores, actually) moons ago, I happily volunteered to write an article for the “Blogs for Learning” Nicole Ellison was putting together. I actually wrote this almost a year ago, while in Aruba, and then inconveniently forgot about it entirely. Blame it on the Balashi. Just ran into her again in Vancouver, and sent it along, and now it appears at the site.

Of course, these days, a “large class” is one that grows to 30 students, thanks to my switch to teaching a smaller private university. But I hope some of the hints that appear in the short article can be of help, especially if you are new to using blogs in lecture classes. Here’s the beginning:

In this short article, I hope to provide some examples of failures and successes in managing blogging in large classes, and some indication of where this might go in the future. Like many people, I started blogging in small senior-level seminars. This was in 1999, and at the time there were not really blogging systems available, and like many other people, I had to write my own. What I saw as a very simple way to replace email lists and bulletin board (forum) systems turned out to be an extraordinarily effective way to encourage conversation among students, and I have used blogs in most of my classes in the years since. Today, blogging in a small class is a fairly easy way to get started for both students and teachers.

One Comment

I’m off to read it! I blog with 70 students in the fall, and another 70 in the winter. Never had a problem with it, but then again, I know that reading everything a student writes is the wrong way to do things…